Ancient Indian Education: An Inquiry into its Origin, Development, and Ideals c6.74

c6.74

Medicine seems to have been studied, though not forming part of the ordinary course. It was no doubt taken up by specialists. I-Tsing refers to a Śāstra on medical science and makes considerable mention of various forms of medical treatment; and Fā-hien, who was in India two hundred years before I-Tsing, mentions the dispensaries and hospitals which existed at Patna.¹ Medicine seems to have been specially cultivated by the Buddhists; and Charaka, who is one of the chief Indian authorities on medicine, is said to have been the court physician of the Buddhist King Kanishka in the first century A.D. There is no evidence that law, mathematics, and astronomy were cultivated in the Buddhist schools of learning. Probably law was already regarded too much as an exclusive possession of the Brāhmans to make intrusion by others possible, while Buddhism would not have the need of astronomy that Brāhmanism had for ascertaining auspicious times for sacrifices and other ceremonial.